CEO Anish Mehta leaves Cosmos-Maya studio to work on new venture

Anish Mehta, CEO of Indian animation studio Cosmos-Maya, is stepping down from his role after 10 years and will announce a new venture later this year.

Anish Mehta

During Mehta’s tenure at the company, it has emerged as one of the biggest animation houses in India and he steered its strategy towards coproductions with international players.

Another major move was to attract private equity investors into the Indian animation business, first with KKR-backed Emerald Media and later with TPG affiliate NewQuest Capital Partners.

NewQuest took a majority stake in the Singapore- and Mumbai-based company last year, after a deal with Emerald.

As CEO and minority shareholder of Cosmos-Maya since 2012, Mehta led the studio’s foray into the development of original Indian animation IP with the launch of Motu Patlu, one of India’s most successful animation series.

Since then, the studio has created over 10,000 half-hours of kids’ animation including Selfie with Bajrangi, Titoo and Dabangg. It claims it has maintained a 50%+ market share of the original Indian kids’ and family content space for a decade.

The studio’s clients include Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network, Sony, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix, Discovery Kids, Facebook and YouTube. Mehta also led the initiative to build the company’s YouTube network, WowKidz, which now has more than 80 million subscribers worldwide.

“I feel very passionately about content creators and believe that digital media has offered a rather egalitarian and equalising platform to all creators,” said Mehta.

“I find the best way to express my appreciation is to be able to support and mentor the new generation of digital content creators as they set out to create path-breaking content that will have a positive impact on countless lives of kids & family audiences. The intention is to partner with global investors and pioneers to achieve this vision.

“It has been a great pleasure working with the current investor, TPG affiliate NewQuest Capital Partners, and I wish them and the team of Cosmos-Maya all the very best for future growth and to carry the legacy forward.”